Days of Vengeance - The Preterist Archive

INTRODUCTION
Christ’s death at the hands of the apostate children of
Israel sealed their fate: The Kingdom would be taken
from them (Matt. 21:33-43). While wrath built up “to
the utmost” (1 Thess. 2:16), God stayed His hand of
judgment until the writing of the New Covenant
document was accomplished. With that done, He
dramatically terminated the kingdom of Israel, wiping
out the persecuting generation (Matt. 23:34-36; 24:34;
Luke 11:49-51). Jerusalem’s destruction was the last
blast of the trumpet, signaling that the “mystery of
God” was finished (Rev. 10:7). There would be no
further canonical writings once Israel was gone.
Destination
From his exile on the island of Patmos, St. John
addressed the Revelation to the churches in seven
major cities of Asia Minor. These seven cities,
connected by a semicircular road that ran through the
interior of the province, served as postal stations for
their districts. “So a messenger from Patmos landed at
Ephesus, traveled north through Smyrna to Pergamum,
and thence southeast through the other four cities,
leaving a copy of the book in each for secondary
circulation in its district. The number ‘seven’ is of
course constantly used in the symbolism of the book of
Revelation, but this fact should not be allowed to
obscure the circumstance that the book is addressed to
seven actual churches in cities ideally placed to serve as
the distribution points.” 19
Asia Minor was a significant destination for two
reasons: First, after the fall of Jerusalem the province of
Asia would become the most influential center of
Christianity in the Roman Empire: “The province of
Asia emerged as the area where Christianity was
strongest, with Ephesus as its radial point. 20 Second,
Asia was the center of the cult of Caesar-worship.
“Inscription after inscription testifies to the loyalty of
the cities towards the Empire. At Ephesus, at Smyrna,
at Pergamum, and indeed throughout the province the
Church was confronted by an imperialism which was
popular and patriotic, and bore the character of a
religion. Nowhere was the Caesar-cult more popular
than in Asia.” 21
After Julius Caesar died (29 B.C.), a temple honoring
him as divus (god) was built in Ephesus. The Caesars
who followed him didn’t wait for death to provide such
honors, and, beginning with Octavian, they asserted
their own divinity, displaying their titles of deity in
temples and on coins, particularly in the cities of Asia.
Octavian changed his name to Augustus, a title of
supreme majesty, dignity and reverence. He was called
the Son of God, and as the divine-human mediator
between heaven and earth he offered sacrifices to the
gods. He was widely proclaimed as the Savior of the
world, and the inscriptions on his coins were quite
frankly messianic – their message declaring, as Stauffer
has written, that “salvation is to be found in none other
save Augustus, and there is no other name given to
men in which they can be saved.” 22
This pose was common to all the Caesars. Caesar was
God; Caesar was Savior; Caesar was the only Lord. And
they claimed not only the titles but the rights of deity
as well. They taxed and confiscated property at will,
took citizens’ wives (and husbands) for their own
pleasure, caused food shortages, exercised the power of
life and death over their subjects, and generally
attempted to rule every aspect of reality throughout the
Empire. The philosophy of the Caesars can be summed
up in one phrase which was used increasingly as the age
progressed: Caesar is Lord!
This was the main issue between Rome and the
Christians: Who is Lord? Francis Schaeffer points out:
“Let us not forget why the Christians were killed. They
were not killed because they worshiped Jesus . . .
Nobody cared who worshiped whom so long as the
worshiper did not disrupt the unity of the state,
centered in the formal worship of Caesar. The reason
the Christians were killed was because they were rebels
. . . They worshiped Jesus as God and they worshiped
the infinite-personal God only. The Caesars would not
tolerate this worshiping of the one God only. It was
counted as treason.” 23
For Rome, the goal of any true morality and piety was
the subordination of all things to the State; the
religious, pious man was the one who recognized, at
every point in life, the centrality of Rome. “The
function of Roman religion was pragmatic, to serve as
social cement and to buttress the state.” 24 Thus,
observes R. J. Rushdoony, “the framework for the
religious and familial acts of piety was Rome itself, the
central and most sacred community. Rome strictly
controlled all rights of corporation, assembly, religious
meetings, clubs, and street gatherings, and it brooked
no possible rivalry to its centrality . . . The state alone
could organize; short of conspiracy, the citizens could
not. On this ground alone, the highly organized
Christian Church was an offense and an affront to the
state, and an illegal organization readily suspected of
conspiracy.” 25
The witness of the apostles and the early Church was
nothing less than a declaration of war against the
pretensions of the Roman State. St. John asserted that
Jesus is the only-begotten Son of God (John 3:16); that
He is, in fact, “the true God and eternal life” (1 John
5:20-21). The Apostle Peter declared, shortly after
Pentecost: “Salvation is found in no one else, for there
is no other name under heaven given to men by which
19. C. J. Hemer, “Seven Cities of Asia Minor” in R. K. Harrison, ed., Major Cities
of the Biblical World (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1985), p. 235.
20. W. H. C. Frend, The Rise of Christianity (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984),
p. 127.
21. H. B. Swete, Commentary on Revelation (Grand Rapids: Kregel Publications,
[1911] 1977), p. lxxxix.
22. Ethelbert Stauffer, Christ and the Caesars (Philadelphia: Westminster Press,
1955), p. 88.
23. Francis A. Schaeffer, How Shall We Then Live? (Old Tappan, NJ: Fleming H.
Revell, 1976), p. 24.
24. Rousas John Rushdoony, The One and the Many: Studies in the Philosophy of
Order and Ultimacy (Tyler, TX: Thoburn Press, [1971] 1978), p. 92.
25. Ibid., pp. 92f.
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